Posted on 12/30/2014 3:11:58 PM PST by WilliamIII
A harmless symbol of Christmas cheer was once deemed so risky that the FDA had to regulate it. Tinsel once contained lead, which, as scientists realized in the 1960s, made it dangerous to kids. That prompted a deal between the FDA and tinsel makers to alter manufacturing methods, the American Chemical Society reports in a video. The 1972 change was at first kept secret, Popular Science reports, for fear “that many people preferring the lead variety would stockpile it,” an official said at the time.
Believe it or not, that wasn’t the first time tinsel had posed a threat: One reason lead was used is that some kinds of tinsel used to be flammable
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I lubbed that ohd tinsahl. Never czued anee problms 4or me.
We got around that by just hanging fishing weights
on the tree...
Well the good thing about that old tinsel during the Cold War was you could wrap yourself like mummy for radiation shielding.
Surprised the gubmint hasn’t shutdown Santa Lucia celebrations yet...candles on your head!!!
http://hometownsource.com/2014/12/20/santa-lucia-has-true-swedish-touch-in-milaca/
Paint doesn’t taste like it used to either.
My brother and I once tried to put tinsel on the tree with the shop vac exhaust and the hose.
It didn’t really work, but we didn’t give up until the tinsel was all over the room.
We thought those lead pellet gun pellets were so cool, especially because you could chew on them.
Y’all had a tree?
All we could afford was a stick.
Half of all adults smoked and in front of kids, cars had no seatbelts, kids played cowboys and Indians with toy guns, candy had red dye #2, kids rode bikes without helmets, gasoline had lead in it, factories had belching smokestacks, prayer was said in school...
There’s lots more Freepers could add to the list.
Ain’t it a miracle we boomers have lived to tell these frightening tales?
We got one of these, without the color wheel, because my mom became allergic to pine.
The first year we had it everyone was disappointed, so the next year my dad spray painted
it green.
Don’t forget how good flaking paint tasted.
Ingenious idea, though.
Maybe the prayer was the reason all the other stuff was mitigated... let me repeat, mitigated, it did not cease to be danger.
Lead or plastic...didn’t matter.
There was ALWAYS a trail of tinsel left across the backyard grass as we pulled the tree into the woods after taking it down.
Christmas was never the same after the normal tinsel was replaced by the floaty, flighty, cling-to-nothing-but-the-person-hanging-it garbage. Couldn’t even open the box without it wanting to go anywhere but on a tree.
When I was a kid we saved the tinsel year-to-year, only had to refresh the stash in order to replace what we ate the previous year. ;)
The Pledge of Allegiance was also said in school - every morning.
You could go swimming in the ocean w/o wearing a haz-mat suit.
If you went to the beach in S. Calif., it was a sure thing you’d come home with crude oil (”tar”) on the bottoms of your feet. Mom would get a rag and the bottle of paint thinner to scrub our feet before we went in the house. Those were the good old days.
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